


Five mission reports Sheppard's team turned in (and one they didn't)

by Jadesfire2808 (Jadesfire)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-22
Updated: 2009-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-05 00:05:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/35535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadesfire/pseuds/Jadesfire2808
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, things just go wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five mission reports Sheppard's team turned in (and one they didn't)

**Author's Note:**

> Originally an SGA_Santa pinch hit, substantially updated and helpfully prodded by Z (thanks!)

** P4X-171 **

_…strongly recommend returning with a full science team. Although the technology appears to be malfunctioning at present, further investigation should be able to determine whether the device is a true matter converter or simply acts on the minds of its subjects. If it is a matter converter, it would represent a significant new development in our understanding of Ancient technology, since we are at present uncertain as to their methods of food production and manufacturing, not to mention its obvious value to the Expedition…_

Sheppard looked up. "Should I be capitalizing 'expedition' too?"

"Because clearly that's the most important feature of Rodney's report." Raising an eyebrow, Elizabeth gave Sheppard an expectant look. "He wants to go back."

"Well, he can't."

"John…"

"He can't." Sheppard put the tablet on Elizabeth's desk, scrolling to an earlier part of the report. "You have read this bit, right?"

"Of course."

"Did you miss the part where we were all turned into animals?"

Unable to hide her smile, Elizabeth ducked her head briefly before looking up again. "You have to admit that it's a fascinating-"

"Animals. Ronon's teeth were, like, three inches long. And I don't even want to talk about the tails."

"I know, John." Leaning forwards, Elizabeth ignored his folded arms and slouched posture. "Look, I'm not saying I'm sold on this completely, but Rodney raises some good points."

"You know that he had six legs, right?"

"Matter transformation," Elizabeth insisted. "Not being totally reliant on the Daedalus or our trading partners."

"Teyla looked like a rabbit."

"John."

He glared. "I spent four hours of my life covered in fur and resisting the urge to eat my team-mates."

"So that's a no?"

"Others might lack my self-control. That's a no."

* * *

 

** P3M-485 **

_…at which point I instructed Doctor McKay to inform the Romalians of the truth. He was reluctant to do so at first, claiming that there were benefits to the deception. However, following the arguments from our fellow team members (Ronon was particularly persuasive) he relented and told the Romalians that we were not, in fact, gods. They received the news with considerable relief, since…_

"I can't believe you," Rodney hissed as a Marine took his P90.

"We've had this conversation. Several times." And Sheppard wasn't keen to go over it again in the Atlantis Gateroom.

"What harm would it have done?" Apparently, Rodney wasn't just going to let this drop.

"You cannot lie to potential allies," Teyla said.

"I thought that's what diplomacy was about!" Yelling in the Gateroom was something Elizabeth didn't usually encourage, and Sheppard saw her hurrying down the stairs towards them.

"What is this?"

Turning to her, Rodney didn't bother lowering his voice as he went on, "In a fit of moral squeamishness, we may just have thrown away our chances at a ZPM."

"They may yet give us access to it," Teyla put in quickly. "And they are much more likely to do so if they know that they can trust us."

"They thought they could trust us when we were gods!" The last word dropped into an echoing silence. Sheppard was pretty sure that if he looked, he'd see every face in the room turned towards them, most of them with the stunned expression that was on Elizabeth's right now.

"You told them you were gods?" she asked, in the quiet, reasonable voice that she saved for when Rodney was being particularly obnoxious.

Shaking his head, Rodney started to struggle out of his tac vest, which fortunately left him unable to gesture. "We didn't tell them we were, we just didn't correct them."

"Not at first." There was no graceful way out of the situation, but Sheppard wasn't going to let Rodney make it worse than it already was. "They saw Ronon firing his gun. Since they've never seen an energy weapon like it, they assumed that we had come from 'beyond' or something like that."

"And how long before you corrected them?" Elizabeth seemed torn between exasperation and amusement, although judging by the twitching at the corner of her mouth, amusement was winning.

"Just a couple of hours," Rodney muttered. "And not until after they'd shown us all the Ancient technology that they were still managing to use thanks to," he paused, finally getting a hand free and waving it for emphasis, "their ZPM."

"It's theirs, Rodney," Sheppard reminded him, feeling the need to get back in control of the situation. "And they said they'd be willing to let us have a look at it. We couldn't just have taken it, could we?" When Rodney seemed to consider this, Sheppard stepped closer, tilting his head. "Could we?"

"Of course not." Sighing, Rodney handed his vest and sidearm over to the Marine who'd been waiting for them, and shook his head. "We could have just borrowed it."

"No, Rodney." Elizabeth's nod made it clear that this was her final word on the subject. "Colonel, I'll look forward to your report."

As they headed to the infirmary for the post-mission checks, Sheppard heard Rodney muttering behind him.

"Just a few hours, that's all we'd need, just to see what we're doing for a change instead of draining the naquadah generators all the time."

Dropping back so they were side by side, Sheppard shook his head. "Give it a rest, McKay."

"Fine. But when the hot water goes out in your quarters, you'll be the first back through the 'gate."

"I'll probably cope. Besides," Sheppard let himself grin, "it's against my programming to impersonate a deity."

McKay's astonished silence was surprisingly gratifying.

* * *

 

** P6R-962 **

_…the local currency is known as the invar, and Teyla was able to sell the contents of hers and my tac vests for a reasonable sum. We then made our way to the market, and began searching for Doctor McKay. Ronon managed to locate the dealer and between us we were able to negotiate a reasonable price that included eight power bars and a life signs detector. Since the latter won't work for them, we did not know why they wanted it, but apparently they just liked the colour. It should also be noted that we purchased Doctor McKay for a bargain price, since his owner did not seem keen to haggle for too long, accepting our second lowest offer._

"I can't believe you let me get sold into slavery." The litany of complaints was showing no signs of letting up, and Sheppard was sorely tempted to go and join Ronon up ahead.

"Look, I said I was sorry," he said again. "I had no idea that was going to happen."

"You sold me."

"I bought you again, didn't I?"

"Yes. Well." McKay sniffed. "I was just surprised you could afford me."

* * *

 

** P87-400 **

_…that McKay put his hand in. Then Sheppard tried to get him out and got stuck too. Teyla told me not to touch them, and tried to find a long stick to get them free. That got stuck to them too. I tried to pull Sheppard off McKay, and I got stuck to them too. Teyla decided that the best thing was just to pick the whole thing up and bring it back through the ring Stargate. Which we did. If McKay hadn't been such an…_

"Thank you." McKay was shaking out his hands, rubbing his shoulders and generally making his usual amount of fuss. Standing on the other side of the infirmary with McKay, Sheppard spent a moment examining his own hands before he looked up, met Ronon's eye and half-smiled.

It hadn't been anywhere near the most unpleasant hour of Ronon's life, but it wasn't an experience he was keen to repeat. Walking back to Atlantis with his hands stuck to Sheppard's waist, and Sheppard's hands stuck to McKay's shoulders had been pretty embarrassing. Then there had been the two hour wait in the infirmary while the doctors tried to get them free. Ronon knew the shift patterns, and he was fairly sure there had been a lot more people around than there should have been. News seemed to have spread.

But the important thing was that they were free now, McKay holding forth as usual, Sheppard hovering to try and keep order and Teyla having retreated somewhere, probably to let out the laughter that she'd been holding onto ever since the whole farce had begun.

Sheppard managed to temporarily silence McKay, giving the other man's shoulder a light punch before coming over to Ronon. "You sure you're alright?"

"Yeah." It wasn't that Ronon objected to Sheppard's company, and he could even stand McKay for short periods, if only for the entertainment value, but the last few hours had worn away what little patience he had. "I'm going for a run. You coming?"

Sheppard glanced over to where McKay was demanding a full body scan from a harassed-looking nurse. "Nah," he said. "I'll make sure Rodney doesn't make any heads explode and try and get him out of here before we have an angry mob on our hands."

Hoping his relief at the prospect of some peace and quiet didn't show, Ronon nodded and started to jog towards the door. The North Pier would probably do nicely. Behind him, McKay's voice reached a new pitch, counterpoint to Sheppard's softer drawl. Maybe, Ronon considered, if he ran hard enough, he could get rid of the urge to hit McKay until he stopped yelling. As he got to the transporter, he let himself grin, shaking his head. Even he couldn't run for that long.

* * *

 

** PQ4-839 **

_…strongly recommend all teams review procedure in this matter. We got lucky…_

Even after they knew, the team waited. Ronon leaned against the wall, Sheppard half-sat, half-lounged in an uncomfortable infirmary chair and Teyla sat cross-legged on one of the beds, no longer pretending to meditate. A passing medic told them to go and get some sleep, and they all nodded, none of them making an attempt to move.

At some point, Ronon started to say, "Look, I-"

"Don't." Sheppard looked up, shaking his head. "Not your fault."

"I didn't know."

"None of us did," Teyla assured him. "Fortunately, Colonel Sheppard was able to recognize what was happening and act in time."

They waited in silence for a while longer, and it was Ronon who broke it again.

"I thought he was making it up."

"I knew he wasn't." Tipping his head back, Sheppard blew out a long breath. "Although I did figure he was exaggerating."

"We all did. There is no blame here." Teyla's tone made it clear that she would accept no arguments. "It was an unfortunate incident and everything is going to be alright. And we are more prepared for the future now."

"No, we're not." Pushing out of his chair, Sheppard disappeared into the main infirmary, leaving Teyla and Ronon to look at each other in confusion. He reappeared a few minutes later, clutching three slim tubes. "This," he said, holding one up, "is an epipen. You're not going to like where you have to stick it, but he'll thank you for it later, I promise."

"It's better than watching him suffocate," Ronon said, taking the offered object.

"What would be even better," Sheppard said dryly, "would be if we could get him to stop eating random things off-world. Since that's not likely to happen any time soon, let me show you how to use this."

* * *

 

**PR7-441**

_…nothing of interest on this planet._

Sheppard let Teyla and Ronon get ahead of them as they walked back to the gate. He was acutely aware that his t-shirt was filthy and his boots seemed to have filled with mud when he wasn't looking. McKay wasn't doing much better, and he kept trying to flatten his hair down again. Sheppard had given up on his as a lost cause.

"So," he said, swallowing hard as McKay jumped a little.

"So."

Biting his lip, Sheppard tried to work out the best way round this. Eventually, he settled on, "I'm not going to turn in a report on this mission."

"That's probably for the best. I'm not sure the Air Force would want to be told about this one." McKay was looking straight ahead, or at the forest around them or at the muddy ground. Anywhere but at Sheppard.

Sheppard didn't blame him. They trudged on in silence for a while, and Sheppard was just beginning to relax when McKay said, "Did you see how Ronon-"

"Yes!" It wasn't like he could forget, however much he might want to.

"And then when Teyla bent-"

"For the love of-" Forcing himself to keep at least some semblance of calm, Sheppard dropped his voice even lower, putting out a hand to bring them both to a stop, and okay, that had been a bad idea, because McKay flushed and took half a step backwards. Sheppard sighed. "Look, McKay, we've done this before. You know," he added quickly, "the whole plausible deniability thing. We're not going to turn in a report on this, and it's not going to say anything about clothes or drugs or rituals or the relative…agility of any team members. Is that clear?"

"Oh yes. Definitely."

"We are also," Sheppard said firmly, "not going to speak of it again. Ever. Is _that_ clear?"

"Well, yes, I was just saying I was impressed at the way you-"

"_Ever_."

"Fine."

McKay lapsed into as close to silence as he ever got, which was a low muttering that Sheppard had long since learned to tune out. They weren't going to talk about it, because then they could at least pretend that nothing had happened. Alright, there had been drugs and rituals and strange aliens and, yes, a certain display of agility, but there was nothing in the galaxy that was going to drag the story out of him, because _it hadn't happened_. Denial solved a multitude of problems, and eventually, he was going to be able to look at McKay without remembering-

Stamping on that line of thought before it could get any further, Sheppard forced himself to think about what he was actually going to put in his 'deny everything' report. Knowing the Atlantis rumor mill, if he turned in anything approaching an accurate account, it would be all round the city within a day, and Sheppard was rapidly discovering that embarrassing alien rituals, especially the naked ones, were only funny when they happened to other people.

The muttering had more or less died out by the time they reached the DHD, where Ronon and Teyla were waiting for them, managing to look as though they hadn't just participated in one of the Pegasus galaxy's more unusual diplomatic missions. Sheppard looked from one of them to the other, getting nothing from the carefully blank expressions.

Clearing his throat, he said, "McKay and I have agreed not to turn in a report on this planet. I mean, the SGC is used to getting reports of weird stuff, but-"

"Do not worry, John." And Sheppard had a sneaking suspicion that he looked as pathetic as he felt, because that was usually when Teyla used his first name and gave him her best 'it's all going to be alright' smile. "We will not say anything."

"Stuff happens," Ronon added, shrugging. "Don't need to tell them if they don't need to know."

"Good." Glancing over at McKay, Sheppard raised an eyebrow, getting a twisted smirk in return.

"We managed not to say anything about the marriage thing on P4M-721 and the goat thing on P95-029. And the thing with the gourd, the girl and the ceremonial water-buffalo on P3X-557. I think we can manage keep this one to ourselves as well."

"I thought we weren't going to ever mention those again, either," Sheppard said, but he managed to smirk back, just a little. "At least we're all agreed. Dial the gate."

McKay did so, and as the wormhole engaged, Sheppard let himself breathe a sigh of relief. They were going home, he could have a shower and pretend the whole day had never happened. Then he'd write his report – such as it was – turn it in to Elizabeth and sleep until the next crisis came up.

But first, he was going to have McKay remove this address from the database. Just in case.


End file.
